Erasmus Mundus Master Course
Information Technologies for Business Intelligence
IT BI
Detailed Course Description
Academic Year 2014-2015
1
University: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Department: Faculté des Sciences Appliquées
Course ID: ADB (INFO-H-415)
Course name: Advanced Databases
Name and email address of the instructors: Esteban Zimányi (ezimanyi@ulb.ac.be)
Web page of the course: http://cs.ulb.ac.be/public/teaching/infoh415
Semester: 1
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h.
• Exercises: 24h.
• Projects: 12h.
Goals:
Today, databases are moving away from typical management applications, and address new application areas.
For this, databases must consider (1) recent developments in computer technology, as the object paradigm and
distribution, and (2) management of new data types such as spatial or temporal data. This course introduces
the concepts and techniques of some innovative database applications
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course students are able to
• Understand various different technologies related to database management system
• Understand when to use these technologies according to the requirements of particular applications
• Understand different alternative approaches proposed by extant database management systems for each of
these technologies
• Understand the optimization issues related to particular implementation of these technologies in extant
database management systems.
Readings and text books:
• R.T. Snodgrass, Developing Time-Oriented Database Applications in SQL, Morgan Kaufmann, 2000
• Jim Melton and Alan R. Simon, SQL: 1999 - Understanding Relational Language Components, Morgan
Kaufmann, 2001
• Jim Melton, Advanced SQL: 1999 - Understanding Object-Relational and Other Advanced Features, Morgan
Kaufmann, 2002
• Shashi Shekhar and Sanjay Chawla, Spatial Databases: A Tour, Prentice Hall, 2003.
Prerequisites:
• Knowledge of the basic principles of database management, in particular SQL
Table of contents:
• Active Databases
Taxonomy of concepts. Applications of active databases: integrity maintenance, derived data, replication.
Design of active databases: termination, confluence, determinism, modularisation.
• Temporal Databases
Temporal data and applications. Time ontology. Conceptual modeling of temporal aspects. Manipulation
of temporal data with standard SQL. New temporal extensions in SQL 2011.
• Object-Oriented and Object-Relational Databases
Object-oriented model. Object Persistance. ODMG standard: Object Definition Language and Object
Query Language.
Object-relational model. Built-in constructed types. User-defined types. Typed tables. Type and table
hierarchies. SQL standard and Oracle implementation.
• Spatial Databases
Application Domains of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Common GIS data types and analysis.
Conceptual Data Models for spatial databases. Logical data models for spatial databases: rastor model
(map algebra), vector model (OGIS/ SQL1999). Physical data models for spatial databases: Clustering
methods (space filling curves), Storage methods (R-tree, Grid files).
Assessment breakdown:
75% written examination, 25% project evaluation
2
University: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Department: Faculté des Sciences Appliquées
Course ID: DBSA (INFO-H-417)
Course name: Database Systems Architecture
Name and email address of the instructors: Stijn Vansummeren (Stijn.vansumeren@ulb.ac.be)
Web page of the course: http://cs.ulb.ac.be/public/teaching/infoh417
Semester: 1
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h.
• Exercises: 12h.
• Projects: 24h.
Goals:
In contrast to a typical introductory course in database systems where one learns to design and query relational
databases, the goal of this course is to get a fundamental insight into the implementation aspects of database
systems. In particular, we take a look under the hood of relational database management systems, with a focus
on query and transaction processing. By having an in-depth understanding of the query-optimisation-andexecution pipeline, one becomes more proficient in administering DBMSs, and hand-optimising SQL queries
for fast execution.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student:
• Understands the workflow by which a relational database management systems optimises and executes a
query
• Is capable of hand-optimising SQL queries for faster execution
• Understands the I/O model of computation, and is capable of selecting and designing data structures
and algorithms that are efficient in this model (both in the context of datababase systems, and in other
contexts).
• Understands the manner in which relational database management systems provide support for transaction
processing, concurrency control, and fault tolerance
Readings and text books:
• Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, and Jennifer Widom. Database Systems: The Complete Book,
Prentice Hall, 2nd Edition, 2008.
• Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke. Database Management Systems. McGraw-Hill, 3rd Edition,
2002.
Prerequisites:
• Introductory course on relational databases, including SQL and relational algebra
• Course on algorithms and data structures
• Knowledge of the Java programming language
Table of contents:
• Query Processing
With respect to query processing, we study the whole workflow of how a typical relational database management system optimises and executes SQL queries. This entails an in-depth study of:
– translating the SQL query into a “logical query plan”;
– optimising the logical query plan;
– how each logical operator can be algorithmically implemented on the physical (disk) level, and how
secondary-memory index structures can be used to speed up these algorithms; and
– the translation of the logical query plan into a physical query plan using cost-based plan estimation.
• Transaction Processing
– Logging
– Serializability
– Concurrency control
Assessment breakdown:
70% written examination, 30% project evaluation
3
University: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Department: Faculté des Sciences Appliquées
Course ID: DE (MATH-H-405)
Course name: Applied Operational Research
Name and email address of the instructors: Yves De Smet (yves.de.smet@ulb.ac.be)
Web page of the course: http://code.ulb.ac.be/~yvdesmet/DEIT4BI
Semester: 1
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h.
• Exercises: 24h.
• Projects: 12h.
Goals:
The goal of this course is to introduce some major chapters of operational research. The main aim is to
illustrate how mathematical models and specific algorithms can be used to help decision makers facing complex
problems (involving a large number of alternatives, multiple criteria, uncertain or risky outcomes, multiple
decision makers, . . .).
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student:
• Is able to formulate and to solve basic decision problems;
• Can identify the properties and limits of common decision models;
• Is ready to deepen his/her knowledge in intermediate and advanced decision sciences courses.
Readings and text books:
•
•
•
•
C.D. Aliprantis, S.K. Chakrabarti, Games and decision making, Oxford University Press, 2000
F.S. Hillier, G.J. Lieberman, Introduction to Operations Research, McGraw Hill, 2005
H.A. Taha, Operations Research: An introduction, Pearson, Prentice Hall, 9th edition, 2010
Ph. Vincke, Multicriteria Decision-Aid, J. Wiley, New York, 1992
Prerequisites:
• Linear algebra
• Basic course on algorithms
• Probability and statistics
Table of contents:
• Introduction to operational research
The origin of operational research and decision sciences, some introductory examples.
• Linear programming
Models, graphical method, simplex algorithm, use of solvers.
• Multicriteria Decision Aid
Main concepts, introduction to multi-objective optimization, multi-attribute utility theory, outranking
methods (ELECTRE & PROMETHEE), applications.
• Decision under risk and uncertainty
Common decision criteria: Maxmin, Maxmax, Hurwitz, Savage, Laplace. Expected utility.
• Introduction to dynamic process (warehouse management, queuing systems)
Assessment breakdown:
75% written examination, 25% project evaluation
4
University: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Department: Faculté des Sciences Appliquées
Course ID: DW (INFO-H-419)
Course name: Data Warehousing
Name and email address of the instructors: Toon Calders (toon.calders@ulb.ac.be)
Web page of the course: http://cs.ulb.ac.be/public/teaching/infoh419
Semester: 1
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h.
• Exercises: 24h.
• Projects: 12h.
Goals:
Relational and object-oriented databases are mainly suited for operational settings in which there are many
small transactions querying and writing to the database. Consistency of the database (in the presence of
potentially conflicting transactions) is of utmost importance. Much different is the situation in analytical
processing where historical data is analyzed and aggregated in many different ways. Such queries differ
significantly from the typical transactional queries in the relational model:
1. Typically analytical queries touch a larger part of the database and last longer than the transactional
queries;
2. Analytical queries involve aggregations (min, max, avg, . . .) over large subgroups of the data;
3. When analyzing data it is convenient to see it as multi-dimensional.
For these reasons, data to be analyzed is typically collected into a data warehouse with Online Analytical
Processing support. Online here refers to the fact that the answers to the queries should not take too long
to be computed. Collecting the data is often referred to as Extract-Transform-Load (ELT). The data in the
data warehouse needs to be organized in a way to enable the analytical queries to be executed efficiently. For
the relational model star and snowflake schemes are popular designs. Next to OLAP on top of a relational
database (ROLAP), also native OLAP solutions based on multidimensional structures (MOLAP) exist. In
order to further improve query answering efficiency, some query results can already be materialized in the
database, and new indexing techniques have been developed.
The first and largest part of the course covers the traditional data warehousing techniques. The main
concepts of multidimensional databases are illustrated using the SQL Server tools. The second part of the
course consists of advanced topics such as data warehousing appliances, data stream processing, data mining,
and spatial-temporal data warehousing. The coverage of these topics connects the data warehousing course
with and serves as an introduction towards other related courses in the program. Several associated partners
of the program contribute to the course in the form of invited lectures, case studies, and “proof of technology”
sessions.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course students are able to
•
•
•
•
•
Understand
Understand
Understand
Understand
Understand
the difference between operational databases and data warehouses
the principles of multidimensional modeling
the exploitation of a data warehouse for querying and reporting
best practices and methodologies for data warehouse development
the process of populating a data warehouse from internal and external sources
Readings and text books:
• Esteban Zimányi and Alejandro Vaisman. Data Warehouse Systems: Design and Implementation. Springer,
2014
• Matteo Golfarelli and Stefano Rizzi. Data Warehouse Design: Modern Principles and Methodologies.
McGraw-Hill, 2009
• Christian S. Jensen, Torben Bach Pedersen, Christian Thomsen. Multidimensional Databases and Data
Warehousing. Morgan and Claypool Publishers, 2010
• Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross, Warren Thornthwaite, Joy Mundy, Bob Becker. The Data Warehouse Lifecycle
Toolkit, 2nd ed. Wiley, 2008.
Prerequisites:
• A first course on database systems covering the relational model, SQL, entity-relationship modelling, con-
5
straints such as functional dependencies and referential integrity, primary keys, foreign keys.
• Data structures such as binary search trees, linked lists, multidimensional arrays.
Table of contents:
There is a mandatory project to be executed in three steps in groups of 3 students, using the tools learned
during the practical sessions, being SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS. Below is the succinct summary of
the theoretical part of the course:
•
•
•
•
Foundations of multidimensional modelling
Querying and reporting a multidimensional database with OLAP
Methodological aspects for data warehouse development
Populating a data warehouse: The ETL process
Assessment breakdown:
75% written examination, 25% project evaluation
6
University: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Department: Faculté des Sciences Appliquées
Course ID: BPM (INFO-H-420)
Course name: Business Process Management
Name and email address of the instructors: Toon Calders (toon.calders@ulb.ac.be)
Web page of the course: http://cs.ulb.ac.be/public/teaching/infoh420
Semester: 1
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h.
• Exercises: 24h.
• Assignments and project: 12h.
Goals:
This course introduces basic concepts for modeling and implementing business processes using contemporary
information technologies. The first part of the considers the modeling of business processes, including the
control flow, and the data and resource perspectives. Petri nets will be used as a theoretical underpinning to
formalize the different workflow patterns and unambiguously define the semantics of the different constructions
in the workflow modelling languages. The workflow languages Yet-another-workflow-Language (YAWL) and
the Business Process Modelling and Notation (BPMN) will be introduced in detail, as well as the main
characteristics of the Business Process Execution Language (BPeL) for the composition of web services, and
Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs).
The second part of the course then goes into the analysis, simulation, verification, and discovery of workflows. Static techniques to verify properties such as soundness and the option-to-complete at model level will
be studied, as well as dynamic properties such as the compliance of an event log with respect to a given model.
For the discovery of workflows, an overview of the main process mining techniques will be discussed.
During the course the students have to perform a couple of modelling assignments in YAWL and BPMN. In
the final project, students build a prototype system enacting one of the workflow modelled in their modelling
assignments.
Affiliated industrial partners of the Erasmus Mundus project will be involved in the course in the form of
invited lectures, case studies, and “proof of technology” sessions. These lectures complement the academic
coverage of the topic with a more business-oriented perspective and form a nice addition to provide a more
complete picture of the Business Processing Modeling landscape.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course students are able to
•
•
•
•
•
Understand the value and benefit as well as the limitations of business process management
Understand the business process management life cycle
Model business processes in BPMN and YAWL
Construct a prototype business process in YAWL
Quickly master vendor-specific products in the BPM area
Readings and text books:
• Mathias Weske. Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures. Springer. 2007
• Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede, Wil M. P. van der Aalst, Michael Adams, Nick Russell (Editors), Modern
Business Process Automation: YAWL and its Support Environment. Springer, 2009.
• Wil van der Aalst. Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes.
Springer, 2012.
Prerequisites:
• Basic programming skills: variables, control structures such as loops and if-then-else, procedures, objectoriented notions such as classes and objects, ...
• Set theory (Notions such as set, set operations, sequence, multiset, function) and logics (mathematical
notation and argumentation; basic proofs)
• Basic graph theory (notions such as graphs, reachability, transitivity, ...)
• Experience with modelling languages such as UML and ER diagrams is recommended.
Table of contents:
There is a mandatory project, split into several tasks during the whole period of the course offering, to be
realized individually for the initial 3 assignments, and in group for the final assignment. The theoretical part
7
of the course is dedicated to topics that allow the students to successfully carry out the project. Below is a
high-level overview of the theoretical part of the course:
• Short overview of enterprise systems architecture and the place of business process management systems in
it. The BPM life cycle.
• Modelling business processes: modelling the control flow, data and resource perspective.
• Enacting the business process models.
• Static and dynamic verification of process models; conformance checking.
• Discovering process models and other properties of processes through process mining.
Assessment breakdown:
50% oral examination, 50% project evaluation
8
University: UFRT
Department: Computer Science Dept.
Course ID: ADW
Course name: Advanced Data Warehousing
Name and email address of the instructors: Dr. Patrick Marcel, Patrick.marcel@univ-tours.fr, Dr.
Veronika Peralta, Veronika.Peralta@univ-tours.fr
Web page of the course:
Semester: 2
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 22 h.
• Exercises: 16 h.
• Project: 12 h.
Goals:
The aim of this course is to complement the course Data Warehouses (Semester 1) in its study of database
technology used in Business Intelligence. A particular focus is given on the problems posed by heterogeneous
data integration and data quality on the one hand, and on leveraging OLAP workload on the other hand.
Classical notions of data warehousing and OLAP are recalled and developed: architecture, ETL, conceptual and logical design, query processing and optimization. Advanced topics like query personalization and
recommendation are introduced.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
• efficiently design, construct and query a data warehouse from real data sources,
• define, measure and maintain data quality in the context of data warehousing.
Readings and text books:
• Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling,
Second edition, John Willey, 2002.
• Matteo Golfarelli, Stefano Rizzi, Data Warehouse Design: Modern Principles and Methodologies, second
edition, McGraw Hill, 2009.
• Maurizio Lenzerini, Panos Vassiliadis, Matthias Jarke, Yannis Vassiliou, Fundamentals of Data Warehouses,
Second edition, Springer, 2002.
• Carlo Batini, Monica Scannapieco, Data Quality Concepts, Methodologies and Techniques, Springer, 2006.
Prerequisites: Course DBSA and course DW (Semester 1).
Table of contents:
• Introduction
– Data warehouse architecture and design
– Advanced conceptual modeling
• Quality
– Quality models, diagnosis, correction, prevention
• Loading
– Integration, ETL
• OLAP workload and querying
– OLAP Workload, OLAP benchmarks
– Formal models and languages, MDX, SQL99
• OLAP implementations
– Query processing and optimization
– In-memory, column-oriented storage
• User-centric OLAP
– Analytic sessions, query personalization and recommendations
Assessment breakdown:
Final written exam (50%), project (50%) assessed by oral presentations, demos, and written reports.
9
University: UFRT
Department: Computer Science Dept.
Course ID: BIS
Course name: Business Intelligence Seminars
Name and email address of the instructors: Patrick Marcel (Patrick.Marcel@univ-tours.fr)
Web page of the course:
Semester: 2
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 30 h.
• Project: 20 h.
Goals:
Thanks to technological advances, the domain of business intelligence is witnessing today an increasing diversification and it addresses new application areas. This seminar covers current trends and recent developments
in the domain of business intelligence. It also discusses the implications of business intelligence on individuals, organizations, and society in general. The seminar is designed and jointly taught by all consortium
partners (whether full or associated partners, academic/research institutions or industrial companies), and
will involve guest speakers presenting their organization, research topics, internships, and proposed Masters’
thesis subjects for the second year of the master.
Learning outcomes:
With this module, the student will 1) acquire a good understanding of the state of the art and the next
evolutions and challenges in the domain, and 2) learn to synthesize, organize, and present scientific and
technical information related to the domain of Business Intelligence, to make it clear to colleagues, and
discuss it objectively.
Readings and text books: Research articles and white papers in the domain of Business Intelligence.
Prerequisites: All courses of Semester 1
Table of contents: The topics of the seminar vary from year to year, according to the guest speakers.
In addition, students (in groups of maximum 5 persons) must realize a project supervised by one or more
UFRT instructors, potentially under the co-supervision of one guest speaker. The topic is chosen in a list of
topics defined jointly by UFRT instructors and invited speakers, and should be related to recent trends and
developments in the domain of business intelligence. The group must write a report and make a presentation
in front of their fellow students. The participation of students to presentations by guest speakers and fellow
students is required.
Assessment breakdown:
A project realized by students in group of 4 or 5, assessed by an oral presentation, a written report, and if
applicable, a demo.
10
University: UFRT
Department: Computer Science Dept.
Course ID: IR
Course name: Information Retrieval
Name and email address of the instructors: Jean-Yves Antoine (Jean-Yves.Antoine@univ-tours.fr),
Anaı̈s Lefeuvre (Anaı̈s.Lefeuvre@univ-tours.fr), Patrick Marcel (Patrick.Marcel@univ-tours.fr), Agata Savary
(Agata.Savary@univ-tours.fr)
Web page of the course:
Semester: 2
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 20 h.
• Exercises: 12 h.
• Lab: 18 h.
Goals:
•
•
•
•
•
To
To
To
To
To
study the problems posed by information retrieval
study the processing, indexing, querying, organization and classification of textual documents
study some basics of information ranking
acquire a general idea of natural language applications and fundaments
acquire some practical skills in natural language applications related to information retrieval
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
•
•
•
•
•
To know how to index document corpus
To know how to design, construct and query a document database
To know how to personalize retrieval results
To have a basic understanding of linguistic modeling
To have a first experience on some NLP applications (name entities detection; textual information retrieval;
text mining)
Readings and text books:
• Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze, Introduction to Information Retrieval,
Cambridge University Press. 2008.
• James F. Allen, Natural Language Understanding. 2nd Edition, Benjamin Cummings, 1995.
• Douglas Biber, Variations across speech and writing. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• Barbara J. Grosz, Karen Sparck-Jones, Bonnie Lynn Webber (Eds.), Readings in Natural Language Processing. Morgan Kaufmann Publ., 1986.
• Xuedong Huang, Alex Acero, Hsiao-Wuen Hon, Spoken Language Processing: A Guide to Theory, Algorithm
and System Development. Prentice Hall, 2001.
• Anand Rajaraman, Jure Leskovec and Jeffrey D. Ullman.
Mining of massive datasets.
http://i.stanford.edu/ ullman/mmds.html
• Amy N. Langville, Carl D. Meyer, Who’s #1?: The Science of Rating and Ranking. Princeton University
Press, 2012
Prerequisites: Courses DBSA and DW (Semester 1). Knowledge on automata and language theory is
welcome.
Table of contents:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Introduction: problems, retrieval processes, architecture, evaluation issues
Retrieval models: boolean model, vector space model, probabilistic model
Indexation
Introduction to ranking and rating
Ranking based on user interest: preferences, query expansion, recommendation
Markov ranking in Web search
Natural Language Processing for Information Retrieval:
General introduction : applications of NLP and linguistic level of description
Morphology : linguistic modeling (compound words), stemming, lemmatization
Terminology : motivation and applications
Morphology and syntax : POS tagging, named entities detection
11
• Syntax : parsing
• Semantic processing for information retrieval : latent semantic analysis
Assessment breakdown:
Final written exam (50%), project (50%) assessed by oral presentations, demos, and written reports.
12
University: UFRT
Department: Computer Science Dept.
Course ID: KDDM
Course name: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
Name and email address of the instructors: Arnaud Giacometti (arnaud.giacometti@univ-tours.fr),
Arnaud Soulet (arnaud.soulet@univ-tours.fr) and Haoyuan Li (haoyuan.li@univ-tours.fr)
Web page of the course:
Semester: 2
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 22 h.
• Exercises: 16 h.
• Lab: 12 h.
Goals:
The key objectives of this course are two-folds: (i) To give students a detailed understanding of the strengths
and limitations of popular data mining techniques, and (ii) To understand the problems associated with the
computational complexity issues in data mining.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
• Prepare raw input data, and process it appropriately to provide suitable input for a wide range of data
mining algorithms.
• Understand the theoretical background of the main data mining algorithms.
• Critically evaluate and select appropriate data mining algorithms.
• Apply data mining algorithms, interpret and report the output appropriately.
More generally, students should be able to actively manage and participate in data mining projects executed
by consultants or specialists in data mining
Readings and text books:
• J. Han and M. Kamber (2006), Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
• P.-N. Tan, M. Steinbach, V. Kumar (2005), Introduction to Data Mining, Addison-Wesley Publisher.
• D. J. Hand, H. Mannila and P. Smyth (2001), Principles of Data Mining, The MIT Press.
Prerequisites: Attendees must have prior knowledge on databases, algorithmic, data structures (trees,
graphs). Some mathematical and statistical background will help.
Table of contents:
• Introduction to data mining: the Knowledge Discovery Process, Data Preparation
• Classification Methods:
– Basic Concepts and Decision Trees
– Introduction to Artificial Neural Networks
– Association Rule based Methods
• Model Evaluation: Statistical Tests, ROC Analysis
• Association Analysis:
– Basic Concepts and Algorithms
– Sequential Patterns, Data Streams
• Clustering:
– Basic Concepts and Algorithms
– Partitioning and Hierarchical Methods
• Bayesian Networks: Basic Concepts and Algorithms
• Advanced Topics (seminars)
Assessment breakdown:
Project (40%) + written final examination (60%)
13
University: UFRT
Department: Computer Science Dept.
Course ID: XWT
Course name: XML and web technologies
Name and email address of the instructors: Dr Béatrice Bouchou Markhoff, (Beatrice.Bouchou@univtours.fr), Mirian Halfeld Ferrari Alves (mirian.halfeld@univ-tours.fr), Nizar Messaı̈ (Nizar.Messai@univtours.fr)
Web page of the course:
Semester: 2
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 22 h.
• Exercises: 16 h.
• Lab: 12 h.
Goals:
• Understanding of the foundations of the web standard for data management, XML, with associated APIs,
schema languages, query languages and transformation languages.
• Basic knowledge on most important developments on the web, web services and semantic web.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Design XML documents
Design XML schemas (DTD, XML Schema)
Design integrity constraints for XML documents
Manage XML namespaces
Process XML documents w.r.t. schemas and integrity constraints (e.g. validation)
Query XML data with XPath and Xquery
Transform XML data with XSLT
Use Java APIs for XML processing
Discover how to express ontologies, create semantic annotations and express queries on semantic data (RDF,
RDFS, OWL, SPARQL)
• Discover how to design, modify and publish web services (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI)
Readings and text books:
• Serge Abiteboul, Ioana Manolescu, Philippe Rigaux, Marie-Christine Rousset and Pierre Senellart. Web
Data Management and Distribution. Oxford Press, 2012.
• Anders Møller and Michael I. Schwartzbach. An Introduction to XML and Web Technologies. AddisonWesley, 2006.
Prerequisites: Attendees must have prior knowledge on Algorithms and data structures (trees and graphs),
language theory (finite state automata), First-order logics and AI
Table of contents:
• Introduction to semi-structured data and XML
– XML document structure, infoset, namespace
• Schema languages and validation process
– DTD, XML Schema, (bottom-up unranked) tree automata
• Navigating XML Trees and integrity constraints
– XPath
– Integrity constraints for XML
• Querying (and transforming) XML documents
– XQuery
– XSLT
• Programming with XML
– API SAX
– API DOM
14
– JAXP
• Introduction to Semantic Web technologies
– Semantic annotations, RDF, SparQL
– Concepts of ontology, RDF schema and OWL
• Introduction to Web Service Technologies
– Service web description with SOAP and WSDL, and publication with UDDI
Assessment breakdown:
Written exam (60%) and Project (40%, oral presentation and written report)
15
University: Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP)
Department: Computer Science Department
Course ID: VA
Course name: Visual Analytics
Name and email address of the instructors: Jean-Daniel Fekete (Jean-Daniel.Fekete@inria.fr)
Web page of the course: (to be created)
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h
• Laboratory: 24h
• Project: 12h
Goals:
This course aims to help students understand the emerging, multidisciplinary field of VA, to familiarise them
with current VA technology, and help them gain the foundations to building visual analytics tools and systems
using real world data.
Learning outcomes:
Upon completing the course, students will be able to:
•
•
•
•
Understand basic concepts, theories and methodologies of Visual Analytics
Analyse data using appropriate visual thinking and visual analytics techniques
Present data using appropriate visual communication and graphical methods
Design and implement a Visual Analytics system for supporting decision making
Readings and text books:
• Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, 1990.
• Robert Spence, Information Visualisation: Design for Interaction, Second Edition, Prentice Hall, 2007.
• Colin Ware, Information Visualisation: Perception for Design, Second Edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 2004.
The course instructor will provide required weekly readings in the form of scientific articles, and will recommend further reading on each topic.
Prerequisites:
• Advanced Data Warehousing (ADW)
• Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KD&DM)
Table of contents:
• VA fundamentals: Theories, methodologies and techniques
• Designing interactive graphics
• Appropriate methods for different data types: Graphs, Hierarchies, Spatio-temporal data, High dimensional
data
• VA system design practices
• Dashboard design
Assessment breakdown:
30% class participation, 70% project (10% proposal, 20% intermediate, 40% final)
16
University: Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP)
Department: Computer Science Department
Course ID: CS&SW
Course name: Corporate Semantics and Semantic Web
Name and email address of the instructors: Gabriel Kepeklian (gabriel.kepeklian@atos.net)
Web page of the course: (to be created)
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h
• Laboratory: 24h
• Project: 12h
Goals:
This course aims at presenting semantic technologies and the benefits to use them in companies for various
applications such as semantic information search, recommendation, question and answering systems, searchbased applications.
Learning outcomes:
• Provide the student with a deep understanding of the Semantic Web Technologies.
• Ability to understand how to use Semantic Technologies for corporate application, with a special emphasise
on the integration of unstructured content to enterprise structured data,
• Be able to build an ontology and use it for a specific application.
Readings and text books:
• Pascal Hitzler, Markus Kroẗzsch, Sebastian Rudolph, Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies, Chapman
& Hall/CRC, 2009.
• Steffen Staab, Rudi Studer, Handbook on Ontologies, Springer, Second Edition, 2009.
• John Davies, Rudi Studer, Paul Warren, Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and Research in Ontologybased Systems, Wiley, 2006 (published online)
• David Taniar, Johanna Wenny Rahayu, Web Semantics Ontology, Idea Group Publishing, 2006.
Prerequisites:
• XML and Web Technologies (X&WT)
• Information Retrieval (IR)
Table of contents:
•
•
•
•
•
The Semantic Web Stack (RDF, RDFS, OWL, SKOS, SPARQL)
Ontology Learning and Life-Cycle
Linked Data
Adding Semantic to corporate data (Triple Store, Ontologies and OLAP, Ontologies and Databases)
Applications: Semantic Search, Question and Answering, Recommendation, Social Networks.
Assessment breakdown:
50% written examination + 50% project evaluation
17
University: Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP)
Department: Computer Science Department
Course ID: DM&ML
Course name: Data Mining and Machine Learning
Name and email address of the instructors: Etienne Cuvelier (cuvelier.etienne@gmail.com), Antoine
Cornuéjols (Antoine.Cornuejols@Iri.fr)
Web page of the course: (to be created)
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h
• Laboratory: 24h
• Project: 27h
Goals:
The goals of this course are to allow the students to discover and practice advanced techniques of data
mining and machine learning. Discover their principles, but also their variants, their applications and their
weaknesses.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able:
• to choose the best techniques to solve a given data mining or machine learning task,
• to tune the parameters of the chosen technique,
• to interpret the results of the chosen technique.
Readings and text books:
• David J. Hand, Heikki Mannila and Padhraic Smyth, Principles of Data Mining, The MIT Press, 2001.
• Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Jerome Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining,
Inference, and Prediction, Second Edition, Springer, 2009.
• Luis Torgo, Data Mining with R, learning with case studies, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2010.
Prerequisites:
• Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KD&DM)
Table of contents:
• Data Mining
–
–
–
–
Principal components analysis, factorial analysis.
Advanced clustering: spectral algorithms, galois lattices.
Regressions.
Analysis of non-tabular data types (graphs, symbolic, functional).
• Problems and methods of Machine Learning
–
–
–
–
–
–
Formalization of the induction problem. Observations, hypothesis performance criterion.
Linear models. Generalization in kernel methods: SVM.
Deep neural networks.
Ensemble methods: boosting
Structured Data Learning: relational methods.
New problems: on-line learning, multi-task learning.
Assessment breakdown:
50% written examination + 50% project evaluation
18
University: Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP)
Department: Computer Science Department
Course ID: DM
Course name: Decision Modelling
Name and email address of the instructors: Valentina Ferretti (valentina.ferretti@polito.it)
Web page of the course: (to be created)
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 24h
• Laboratory: 24h
• Project: 12h
Goals:
This course aims at presenting classical decision models with a special emphasis on decision making in uncertain situations, decision with multiple attribute, and decision with multiple stakeholders. During the course,
various applications will be presented, emphasizing the practical interest and applicability of the models in
real-world decision situations.
Learning outcomes:
• Provide the student with decision models and a better understanding of the validity of these decision models,
• Ability to understand the three levels of decision analysis: representation of observed decision behaviour
(descriptive analysis), decision aiding and recommendation (prescriptive analysis), and the design of artificial decision agents (normative analysis).
Readings and text books:
• Denis Bouyssou, Thierry Marchant, Marc Pirlot, Alexis Tsoukiás, Philippe Vincke, Evaluation and decision
models with multiple criteria: Stepping stones for the analyst, Springer, International Series in Operations
Research and Management Science Volume 86, 2006.
• William W. Cooper, Lawrence M. Seiford, and Kaoru Tone, Introduction to Data Envelopment Analysis
and Its Uses, Springer, 2006.
Prerequisites:
• Decision Engineering (DE)
Table of contents:
• Data envelopment Analysis: Analysis of the efficiency of production units
• Decision under uncertainty, decision trees: theory, modeling and applications
• Behavioural decision analysis: Empirical analysis of decision behaviour, cognitive decision biases, prospect
theory
• Outranking methods (theory and applications): Presentation of the Electre methods( Electre I, Electre 3,
Electre Tri), reference based ranking.
• Applications on a generic Decision platform: Decision Deck. Case studies and use o an open source plateform
for decision aid.
• Group decision: Group decision, elicitation of a group decision model
• Preference learning: Eliciting preference model for a decision maker, for several decision makers
• Decision making using Multiple Objective Optimisation : Epsilon constraint method, applications, approximation algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, NSGA II
Assessment breakdown:
Assessment of the homework exercises (10%), Written exam (60%), Project (30%)
19
University: Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP)
Department: Computer Science Department
Course ID: II&R
Course name: Introduction to Innovation and Research
Name and email address of the instructors: Nacéra Bennacer (nacera.bennacer@supelec.fr)
Web page of the course: (to be created)
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 5
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 12h
• Laboratory: 18h
• Project: 30h
Goals:
The objectives of this course are to provide industrial and research presentations for students from the main
BI software editors and clients as well as researchers in this domain. The European research context as well
as intellectual properties, incubators and start-up creation will be presented. Students will also develop a
research project in a collaborative way.
Learning outcomes:
• Provide the student with knowledge about intellectual properties, incubators and European research context
(FP7 projects, ICT-labs, etc.)
• Various seminars from key BI actors will be presented.
• Ability to manage a research project for a client.
Readings and text books:
• Scientific papers will be distributed by the course lecturer according to the topics covered.
Prerequisites:
• Business Intelligence Seminar (BIS)
Table of contents:
•
•
•
•
•
Seminars: innovation and research
Intellectual Property
Presentation of resources such as incubators
The European research context
Research project
Assessment breakdown:
Project evaluation 100%
20
University: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Department: Department of Service and Information System Engineering
Course ID: SOBI
Course name: Service Oriented Business Intelligence
Name and email address of the instructors: Alberto Abelló (aabello@essi.upc.edu)
Web page of the course: http://www.fib.upc.edu/en/masters/miri/syllabus/SOBI-MIRI.htm
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 36 h.
• Problems and laboratories: 18 h.
• Self-Study: 96 h.
Goals:
This course focuses on developing the student’s skills to put their knowledge on service companies and benefiting from service facilities to build business intelligence solutions. On the one hand, we will analyze the
specificity of this sector and present techniques to engineering their systems (i.e., Service Oriented Architecture). On the other hand, we will also analyze to which extent it is possible to consider Data Warehousing
just a service and use these same techniques in its engineering methods.
A joint real-world project potentially ready to be launched as a start up will be coordinated with other
sibling subjects: BIP, SEAIT, SW and VBP. The analysis of the performance of technologies is the main
outcome of SOBI, the management of the project will be developed in BIP, the interfaces in WS, the business
plan in VBP, and the ethical part of the business model will be conducted in the humanities course (SEAIT).
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
• Knowledge
–
–
–
–
–
Understand the specificity of service companies.
Identify Business Intelligence as a service.
Recognise the characteristics and benefits of Infrastructure as a Service.
Recognise the characteristics and benefits of Software as a Service.
Recognise the characteristics and benefits of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
• Skills
– Be able to develop Business Intelligence Service on Platform as a Service (specially on cloud databases).
– Be able to work on Business Process as a Service and provide tools to analyse such processes (both
qualitatively and quantitatively).
Readings and text books:
• Marie-Aude Aufaure and Esteban Zimányi, editors. Proceedings of the 1st European Business Intelligence
Summer School, eBISS 2011, LNBIP 96. Springer, 2012.
• Christian Baun. Cloud computing : Web-based dynamic IT Services. Springer, 2011. ISBN:978-3-64220916-1.
• Pramod Sadalage and Martin Fowler. NoSQL distilled : a brief guide to the emerging world of polygot
persistence. Addison-Wesley, 2013. ISBN:978-0-321-82662-6.
• Hasso Plattner and Alexander Zeier. In-Memory Data Management. Springer, 2011. ISBN:978-3-64219362-0.
• Marlo Dumas. Fundamentals of business process management. Spinger, 2011. ISBN:978-3-642-33142-8.
Other Literature:
• Tamer Özsu und Patrick Valduriez: Principles of Distributed Database Systems, Prentice Hall, third edition,
2011
• Anand Rajaraman, Jeffrey D. Ullman: Mining of Massive Datasets, Cambridge University. Press, 2012
• Will M. P. van der Aalst: Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes,
Springer, 2011.
• Scott E. Sampson. Understanding Service Businesses: Applying Principles of Unified Services Theory, 2nd
Edition, John Wiley& Sons, 2001.
• Thomas Erl. Service Oriented Architecture, Prentice Hall, 2006.
• Mike Papazoglou et al., editors. Service Research Challenges and Solutions for the Future Internet, LNCS
6500, Springer 2010.
21
• David S. Linthicum. Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide,
Addison-Wesley, 2009.
Prerequisites:
• Business Process Management (BPM)
• Advanced Data Warehousing (ADW)
Table of contents:
• Introduction to services: definition and specific characteristics
• Cloud Computing
– IaaS
– PaaS
– SaaS
• Cloud databases
–
–
–
–
–
Distributed databases principles
CloudDB (BigTable)
MapReduce (Hadoop)
In-memory column stores (HANA)
Stream management
• BaaS
– Service Oriented Architecture
– ETL
• Service analysis
– Qualitative
– Quantitative
Assessment breakdown:
20% written examination, 40% problem classes and laboratories, 30% projecte, 10% peermarking
22
University: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Department: Department of Service and Information System Engineering
Course ID:
Course name: Business Intelligence Project (BIP)
Name and email address of the instructors: Oscar Romero (oromero@essi.upc.edu)
Web page of the course: http://www.fib.upc.edu/en/masters/it4bi/syllabus/BIP-IT4BI.htm
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 9 h.
• Projects: 141 h.
Goals:
This course focuses on developing the student’s skills to put their knowledge on software engineering and
databases (as long as specific knowledge on project management introduced in this course) into practice,
with the aim to develop information systems (IS) to support business intelligence (BI) processes within organizations. The course simulates an environment whose conditions are similar to those of a BI industrial
project. So that, the students are required to work in a team, play roles, and successfully develop a project
by gathering requirements from real stakeholders, planning the project, modeling the BI processes, analyzing
and monitoring the project development to meet the end-user requirements, designing the system and incorporating automatic testing (in the form of Test-Driven Development and/or Behaviour-Driven Development),
while documenting all the process. Eventually, a prototype is required. This course applies Agile Software
Development techniques and the student will be introduced on how to adapt Agile for BI environments.
A joint real-world project potentially ready to be launched as a start up will be coordinated with other
sibling subjects: BIP, SEAIT, SW and VBP. The project management and implementation is the main
outcome of BIP, the analysis of performance of the technologies will be developed in SOBI, the interfaces in
WS, the business plan in VBP, and the ethical part of the business model will be conducted in the humanities
course (SEAIT).
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to undertake BI projects and therefore:
• Lead and manage software projects for Business Intelligence,
• Enable flexible and dynamic project environments with Agile Software Development principles and practices
(when applicable),
• Correctly identify and analyze the special needs of the project with regard to requirements,
• Model and Deploy Business Intelligence Processes,
• Design and deploy integrated data repositories,
• Design and deploy data flow processes,
• Assess the need of non-traditional tools / systems / methods for Big Data and Business Intelligence projects:
NOSQL databases, integration techniques and data quality issues,
• Incorporate automatic testing (BDD and/or TDD) to validate the system developed,
• Incorporate effective data visualization techniques for Business Intelligence systems,
• Successfully develop the project in a well-rounded, disciplined and methodological manner,
• Strength the student’s team work skills, such as the ability to reach agreements, play a specific team role
and reuse and continue other teammate’s work,
• Perform oral presentations and defense in real business environments with customers.
Readings and text books:
• M. Golfarelli, S. Rizzi, Data Warehouse Design, McGraw Hill, 2009
• A. Fox, D. Patterson, Engineering software as a service: an Agile approach using Cloud Computing, Strawberry Canyon, 2012.
• B. Meyer, Agile! The Good, The Hype and the Ugly, Springer, 2014.
Prerequisites:
•
•
•
•
•
Advanced Databases (AD)
Business Process Management (BPM)
Advanced Data Warehousing (ADW)
Information Retrieval (IR)
Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDDM)
23
Table of contents: At the beginning of the course a real case study is presented to the students. They will
need to develop in the shape of a project course. During the first weeks there will be an introduction to key
concepts prior to start developing it:
• Specificities of BI projects
• Agile project management techniques for BI systems.
– Requirement elicitation for BI (Agile approach)
– Project management techniques: SCRUM, KANBAN
– Automatic testing: BDD, TDD
From there on, the students are expected to develop the whole project until completion throughout 6 welldefined stages:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Formal specification and analysis
Modeling BI processes
Design (including choose the appropriate service-oriented architecture for the system)
Project management
Validation / testing
Project defense
The project is expected to be developed in the course sessions (under supervision of the teacher), and as
teamwork (with no supervision). The course sessions (following the Agile Sprint concept) follow a project
based learning approach (PBL) in which the students are required to play a specific role within their team,
undertake team discussions, reach agreements and champion their decisions.
Assessment breakdown:
30% project sprints, 30% project management, 20% project defense, 20% peer-marking (this mark is assigned
by the lecturer based on the mark given by your teammates)
24
University: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Department: Department of Service and Information System Engineering
Course ID:
Course name: Web Services (WS)
Name and email address of the instructors: Carles Farré (farre@essi.upc.edu)
Web page of the course: http://www.fib.upc.edu/en/masters/miri/syllabus/WS-MIRI.htm
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
•
•
•
•
Lectures: 26 h.
Lab sessions: 28 h.
Autonomous work: 81 h.
Exam preparation: 15 h.
Goals:
This course focuses on the need for systems interoperability and how Web services, an umbrella concept for
different cross-platform solutions based on Web standards, attempt to overcome the many challenges that
distributed information systems have addressed in various ways (but not always successfully) in the past. By
the end of the course, students will have learned the relevant concepts related to the nature, characteristics and
types of Web Services and acquired some experience in consuming, designing, constructing and maintaining
services located on the Web.
A joint real-world project potentially ready to be launched as a start up will be coordinated with other
sibling subjects: BIP, SEAIT, SOBI and VBP. The ability to create Web-based interfaces for the project will
be the main outcome of WS, the analysis of the performance of the required technologies will be dealt with
at SOBI, the management of the project will be developed at BIP, the business plan in VBP, and the ethical
part of the business model will be conducted in the humanities course (SEAIT).
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
•
•
•
•
Understand the fundamental Web technologies that are the basis for the development of web services,
Know the different protocols and communication standards for web services,
Design and implement software that interacts with web services and public or private web APIs,
Design and implement web services, selecting and using the technologies and tools that are most appropriate
in each case,
• Test and monitor web services, selecting and using the technologies and tools that are most appropriate in
each case.
Readings and text books:
• Gustavo Alonso, Fabio Casati, Harumi Kuno, Vijay Machiraju. Web Services. Concepts, Architectures and
Applications, Springer, 2004.
• Robert Daigneau. Service Design Patterns: Fundamental Design Solutions for SOAP/WSDL and RESTful
Web Services. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2011.
• Thomas Erl, Benjamin Carlyle, Cesare Pautasso, Raj Balasubramanian. SOA with REST: Principles,
Patterns & Constraints for Building Enterprise Solutions with REST, Prentice Hall, 2012.
• Michael P. Papazoglou. Web Services: Principles and Technology, Prentice Hall, 2008.
• Leon Shklar, Rich Rosen. Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices. Second
Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2009.
Prerequisites:
• XML and Web Technologies (X&WT)
Table of contents:
• Introduction
• Origins & Precedents: Fundamentals of Distributed Systems. Middleware, SOA
• Core Web Technologies:
–
–
–
–
The Fundamentals: URIs. HTTP. Proxies, caches, cookies
Browser-Based Computing: JavaScript, DOM, AJAX
Server-Side Computing: CGI, PHP, Java Servlets
Web Data Exchange Formats: XML, JSON
25
• Core WS Protocols
– SOAP and WSDL
– RESTful WS
• WS Development
–
–
–
–
–
Properties of a service development methodology
Qualities of service development methodology
Web services development lifecycle
Service analysis, design and construction
Design Patterns for Web Service Development
• Securing WS
–
–
–
–
General Concepts
Securing RESTful Web Services
XML Security Standards
Securing WS-* Web Services
• Advanced Topics
Assessment breakdown:
30% Written final exam, 30% Weekly lab Sessions, 20% Lab project, 20% Presentations
The instructors will present the course contents using slides or some other material.
There will be also lecture sessions in which students will be required to prepare on their own and present
to the class a certain topic.
During the lab, during the first 9 weeks of the course, and after a brief introduction, the students will be
required to complete a certain number of tasks using the computer in accordance with a work plan.
During the last 5 lab sessions of the course, the students, in groups of 3-4, will design and implement a
web service project that will be coordinated with the other sibling subjects: BIP, SEAIT, SOBI and VBP.
The lab sessions will be used to work in the project, discuss and fix doubts and problems, plan and manage
goals, and present results.
Some course contents are not presented in the lectures and must be studied by the students on their own.
Teachers will indicate which contents should be studied and the teaching resources that might be employed.
26
University: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Department: Department of Management
Course ID:
Course name: Viability of Business Projects (VBP)
Name and email address of the instructors: Marc Eguiguren (marc.eguiguren@upc.edu)
Web page of the course: http://www.fib.upc.edu/en/masters/it4bi/syllabus/VBP-IT4BI.htm
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
•
•
•
•
Lectures: 36 h.
Projects in the classroom: 18 h.
Projects: 56 h.
Self-Study: 40 h.
Goals:
University graduates can find themselves in the situation of having to analyse or take on the project of starting
their own business. This is especially true in the case of computer scientists in any field related to Business
Intelligence (BI) or more generally, in the world of services. There are moments in one’s professional career at
which one must be able to assess or judge the suitability of business ventures undertaken or promoted by third
parties, or understand the possibilities a new service has for success. It is for this reason that this subject
focuses on providing students with an understanding of the main techniques used in analysing the viability
of new business ventures: business start-up or the implementation of new projects in the world of services or
in the specific field of BI. This project-oriented, eminently practical subject is aimed at each student’s being
able to draft as realistic a business plan as possible.
A joint real-world project potentially ready to be launched as a start up will be coordinated with other
sibling subjects: BIP, SEAIT, SW and SOBI. The creation of the business idea, the business model and
the development of the business plan are the main outcomes of VBP, the analysis of the performance of the
required technologies will be dealt with at SOBI, the management of the project will be developed at BIP,
the interfaces at WS, and the ethical part of the business model will be conducted in the humanities course
(SEAIT).
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student is able to:
•
•
•
•
•
Being able to analyze the external situation to determine business innovative ideas in the field of BI
Around an innovative BI project, being able to build a reasonable and ethically solid business plan
Building a solid and convincing speech about a business idea and a business plan
Training the students to build a P&L forecast and a forecasted treasury plan for a starting company
Understanting and being able to apply the different instruments to finance the company, both debt instruments or private equity and venture capital sources
• Understand and appreciate the role of the entrepreneur in modern society
Readings and text books:
• Rhonda Abrams, Eugène Kleiner. The Successful Business Plan. The Planning Shop, 2003.
• Rob Cosgrove. Online Backup Guide for Service Providers, Cosgrove, Rob, 2010.
• Peter Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurs. Butterworth-Heinemann, Classic Drucker Collection edition,
2007.
• Robert D. Hisrich, Michael P. Peter, Dean A. Shepherd. Entrepreneurship. Mc Graw Hill, 6th Ed., 2005.
• Mike McKeever. How to Write a Business Plan. Nolo, 2010.
• Lawrence W. Tuller. Finance for Non-Financial Managers and Small Business Owners. Adams Business,
2008.
Other Literature:
• M. Eguiguren, E. Barroso. Empresa 3.0: polı́ticas y valores corporativos en una cultura empresarial
sostenible. Pirámide , 2011.
• M. Eguiguren, E. Barroso. Por qué fracasan las organizaciones: de los errores también se aprende.
Pirámide, 2013.
Prerequisites:
Having some previous knowledge or experience in business administration is an additional asset.
27
Table of contents: This course focuses on developing a BI or services oriented business plan. So that, the
students are expected to reuse and consolidate any previous knowledge on databases, software engineering
and BI obtained in previous courses to develop a comprehensible, sustainable and profitable business.
The course is structured in 14 well-defined stages:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Introduction to the course and key aspects of a business idea
The entrepreneur’s role in society, characteristics and profile
Innovation and benchmarking Axis 1) Identification of long-term market megatrends
Innovation and benchmarking axis 2) Technological evolution as a source of ideas. Technology applied to
industry.
Axis of innovation and benchmarking 3) ethical business models as a source of innovation and ideas
From the idea to the company. Contents of the business plan. Market research.
Competitive advantages. SWOT Analysis
Marketing plan: strategic marketing, distribution and product
Marketing plan: price and promotion strategies
The human team in a small innovative company
Different kind of societies. Fiscal basics for entrepreneurs
Need of resources. Building the balance sheet at the beginning of the company
Building a forecasted P&L for the first two years. Cash-Flow
Revising the initial balance sheet and building the forecasted balance sheet for year one
Treasury plan, Identifying long and short term financial needs
Conventional long and short term financial instruments
Private equity: founders, fools, friends & family, venture capital. Their limitations. Cautions to be taken
and how they work.
Presenting the plan to possible simulated or real investors
The business plan is expected to be partially developed in internal activities (under supervision of the
teacher), and in external activities, always as teamwork (with no supervision).
Assessment breakdown:
The assessment is based on student presentations and the defence of the business plan before a jury comprising
course faculty members and - optionally - another member of the teaching staff or guest professional.
Throughout the course there will be four evaluative milestones:
• presentation of the innovative business model,
• presentation of the marketing plan,
• presentation of the business plan as a whole, that will include an evaluation about ethics and sustainability
of the project together with SEAIT,
• analysis of the financial plan and the proposal to investors.
The presentation simulates a professional setting. Accordingly, the following aspects will also be assessed:
dress, formal, well-structured communication, etc.
In order to be able to publicly defend the business plan, students must have attended at least 70% of
the classes and teams must have delivered on time the activities that have been planned during the course.
The plan is the result of teamwork, which will be reflected in the grade given to the group as a whole. Each
member of the group will be responsible for part of the project and will be graded individually on his or her
contribution.
This approach is designed to foster teamwork, in which members share responsibility for attaining a
common objective.
28
University: Technische Universität Berlin (TUB)
Department: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Course ID: BDASEM
Course name: Big Data Analytics Seminar
Name and email address of the instructors: Volker Markl (sekr@dima.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Web page of the course: http://www.dima.cs.tu-berlin.de
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 3
Course breakdown and hours:
• Lectures: 30h.
• Exercises: 30h.
Goals:
Participants of this seminar will acquire knowledge about recent research results and trends in the analysis
of web-scale data. Through the work in this seminar, students will learn the comprehensive preparation and
presentation of a research topic in this field. In order to achieve this, students will get to read and categorise
a scientific paper, conduct background literature research and present as well as discuss their findings.
Learning outcomes:
After the course, students will be able to critically read and evaluate scientific publications, and to conduct
background research. They will be capable of preparing for and giving oral presentations on research topics
for an expert audience, of analyzing the state of the art of a research topic, and of summarizing it in a scientific
paper. They should also understand techniques used in the scientific community like peer reviews, conference
presentations, and defenses of the findings after their presentation, as well as they should understand methods
for large-scale data analytics.
Readings and text books:
At the beginning of the semester students will receive a set of primary literature, which consists of a basic item
for every participant. Then students will learn about presentation techniques and guidelines on how to read
scientific papers. This is be extended by learning how to write texts specially in the context of the English
language. Students should use secondary sources to research the topic assigned to them in the seminar, which
should go beyond the supplied primary literature. Next to conventional sources like the internet students
are required to use research journals and articles published at information management conferences such as
WWW, VLDB, or SIGMOD.
• Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Jennifer Widom: Database Systems: The Complete Book, Prentice
Hall, second edition, 2009.
• Tom White. Hadoop: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition. O’Reilly Media, 2012.
• Jimmy Lin, Chris Dyer Data-Intensive Text Processing with MapReduce. Morgan & Claypool, 2010.
Prerequisites:
• Database Systems Architecture (DBSA)
Table of contents:
Both the sciences and industry are currently undergoing a profound transformation: large-scale, diverse data
sets - derived from sensors, the web, or via crowd sourcing - present a huge opportunity for data-driven decision
making. This data poses new challenges in a variety of dimensions: in its unprecedented volume, in the speed
at which it is generated (its velocity) and in the variety of data sources that need to be integrated. A whole
new breed of systems and paradigms is currently developed to be able to cope with that these challenges.
The field of Big Data Analytics deals with the technological means of gaining insights from huge amounts of
data. In this seminar, students will review the current state of the art in this field.
Assessment breakdown:
The grade of the module will be composed from the results of the presentation (50%) and the written seminar
report (50%) for this presentation.
29
University: Technische Universität Berlin (TUB)
Department: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Course ID: : IDB-PRA (0434 L 468)
Course name: Implementation of a Database Engine (practice project)
Name and email address of the instructors: Volker Markl (sekr@dima.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Web page of the course: http://www.dima.cs.tu-berlin.de
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
4 hrs. plenary sessions per week, 8 hrs. home and project work, totals 180 hrs./term
• Plenary sessions: 60 hrs.
• Project work/Preparation & consolidation: 120 hrs.
Goals:
The global data volume is increasing dramatically each year. Understanding how to store, process and manage
these huge amounts of data efficiently is a key requirement for software engineers and data analysts in the
modern IT world. This project (following the corresponding lecture topics of IDB VL – Database Internals
& Scalable Data Processing) will teach students both the fundamentals of data processing in traditional
single-node database systems and how to scale out these techniques to huge amounts of data in large-scale,
distributed environments.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the participants of this course/project will achieve in-depth knowledge about both the fundamentals of data processing in traditional single-node database systems and how
to scale out these techniques to huge amounts of data in large-scale, distributed environments. During the
implementation project, students will get hands-on experience with important data processing techniques
by implementing several components of a relational database system and by using parallel programming
platforms like Apache Hadoop or Nephele/PACT.
The course is principally designed to impart: Technical skills 30%; Method skills 30%, System skills 30%,
social competence: 10%.
Readings and text books:
Primary literature
• Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Jennifer Widom: Database Systems: The Complete Book, Prentice
Hall, second edition, 2009.
Other literature
•
•
•
•
•
R. Elmasri, S.B. Navathe: Fundamentals of Database Systems, Sixth edition, Addison-Wesley, 2010
J. Gray, A. Reuter: Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques, Morgan Kaufman, 1992
T. Özsu, P. Valduriez: Principles of Distributed Database Systems, Second edition, Springer, 2011
K.-U. Sattler, A. Heuer, G. Saake: Datenbanken - Konzepte und Sprachen, Fifth edition, mitp Verlag, 2013
T. Härder, E. Rahm: Datenbanksysteme: Konzepte und Techniken der Implementierung, Springer, Second
edition, 2001
• A. Kemper, A. Eickler: Datenbanksysteme: Eine Einführung, Oldenburg, Ninth Auflage 2013
Prerequisites: A basic course on database systems. Knowledge of data modeling, relational algebra, and
SQL as well as a very good command of Java, or possibly C/C++/C#, programming is required to participate
in the course.
Table of contents:
During the implementation project, students will implement several components of a relational database
system, using parallel programming platforms like Apache Hadoop or Nephele/PACT: Table Page Layout,
ARC, Buffer Pool Manager, B-Tree, Operators, Optimizer, MapReduce
Assessment breakdown:
• Presentation/demo of the implementation project 30%
• Successful completion of the implementation project 70%
30
University: Technische Universität Berlin (TUB)
Department: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Course ID: AIM1 - HDIS (0434 L 440)
Course name: Heterogeneous and Distributed Information Systems
Name and email address of the instructors: Ralf Kutsche (sekr@dima.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Web page of the course: http://www.dima.cs.tu-berlin.de
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
Integrated course: 4 hrs. plenary sessions per week, 8 hrs. home and project work, totals 180 hrs./term
• Lectures & Labs (integrated): 60 hrs.
• Home/Project Work: 120 hrs.
Goals:
This course addresses master students with a focus on database systems, information management and business intelligence, in order to achieve deep knowledge in modern distributed heterogeneous information infrastructures. Heterogeneity in data models, distributed data organization/software architectures as well as
interoperability and middleware platforms for HDIS (FIS, P2P, CS, . . .), and, finally their persistency concepts and services will be studied in deep detail. Additional support by semantic concepts (ontologies, . . .),
model/metamodel and metadata management guides the way towards model-based development of HDIS and
their applications in industry and public services.
Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, the participants of this course will achieve deep conceptual, methodical, technical and practical knowledge in requirements analysis, design, architecture and development of
heterogeneous and distributed information systems. This includes firstly classical knowledge about federated
databases and mediator-based information systems (tight or loose coupling wrt. the dimensions of distribution, heterogeneity and autonomy). Secondly, the students can handle different paradigms of heterogeneous
information infrastructures and their management (e.g., FedIS, CS, P2P) and interoperability architectures
(“middleware”). Finally, modern model-based concepts for the development, integration and evolution of
arbitrary information infrastructures, and –under this conceptual frame– model, metamodel, and metadata
management as well as semantic concepts will be brought into practical experience by a larger seminar project
work.
The course is principally designed to impart: technical skills 50%, method skills 30%, system skills 10%,
social skills 10%
Readings and text books:
For each topic during this course appropriate text books, journal and conference papers, PhD dissertations,
technical reports, and industrial standards will be used.
Prerequisites:
• Database Systems Architecture (DBSA)
• A course on Software Engineering
• A course on Advanced Information Modelling (e.g., INFMOD at TUB), strongly recommended
Table of contents:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Foundations/Terminology of HDIS (FDBS, FIS, MBIS)
Dimensions of HDIS: Distribution, Heterogeneity, Autonomy
Heterogeneous Data Models in HDIS: structured, semistructured, unstructured
Distributed Data Organisation and Software Architectures of HDIS (FIS, P2P, CS, . . .)
Interoperability and Middleware Platforms for HDIS
Persistency Services
Semantic Concepts in HDIS
Metadata Standards and Management in HDIS
Model-based Development of HDIS
Applications from Industry and Public Services
Assessment breakdown:
Seminar Talk 25%, Technical Report 40%, Project 35%, Homework & Lab Assessment 5%
31
University: Technische Universität Berlin (TUB)
Department: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Course ID: IMPRO3 (0434 L 483)
Course name: Big Data Analytics Projects
Name and email address of the instructors: Volker Markl (sekr@dima.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Web page of the course: http://www.dima.cs.tu-berlin.de
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 9
Course breakdown and hours:
• Projects: 60 h
Goals:
In this course you will learn to systematically analyze a current issue in the information management area
and to develop and implement a problem-oriented solution as part of a team. You will learn to cooperate as
team member and to contribute to project organization, quality assurance and documentation. The quality of
your solution has to be proven through analysis, systematic experiments and test cases. Examples of IMPRO
projects carried out in recent semesters are a tool used to analyse Web 2.0 Forum data, an online multiplayer
game for mobile phones, implementation and analysis of new join methods for a cloud computing platform or
the development of data mining operations on the massively parallel system Hadoop as part of the Apache
open source project Mahout.
Learning outcomes:
After the course, students will be able to understand methods for large-scale data analytics and to solve
large-scale data analytics problems. They will be capable of designing and implementing large-scale data
analytics solutions in a collaborative team.
Readings and text books:
• Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Jennifer Widom: Database Systems: The Complete Book, Prentice
Hall, second edition, 2009.
• Anand Rajaraman, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Mining of Massive Datasets, Cambridge 2010.
Prerequisites:
• Heterogeneous and Distributed Information Systems (H&DIS)
Table of contents:
Both the sciences and industry are currently undergoing a profound transformation: large-scale, diverse data
sets - derived from sensors, the web, or via crowd sourcing - present a huge opportunity for data-driven decision
making. This data poses new challenges in a variety of dimensions: in its unprecedented volume, in the speed
at which it is generated (its velocity) and in the variety of data sources that need to be integrated. A whole
new breed of systems and paradigms is currently developed to be able to cope with that these challenges.
The field of Big Data Analytics deals with the technological means of gaining insights from huge amounts
of data. Students will conduct projects that deal with applying data mining algorithms to large datasets.
For that, students will learn to use so called Parallel Processing Platforms, systems that execute parallel
computations with terabytes of data on clusters of up to several thousand machines.
At the start of the project, a student will receive a topic as well as some information material. The
team, with the assistance of the lecturer, will decide on a project environment with the suitable tools for
team work, project communication, development and testing. Next, the problem will have to be analyzed,
modelled and decomposed into individual components, from which tasks are derived that are subsequently
assigned to smaller teams or individuals. At weekly project meetings, the project team presents progress and
milestones that have been reached. In consultation with the lecturer, it is decided which further steps to take.
The project is concluded with a final report, a project poster as well as a final presentation which includes a
demonstration of the prototype.
Assessment breakdown:
The overall grade for the module consists of the results of ‘exam equivalent’ course work
(PrüfungsäquivalenteStudienleistungenPäS). The following are included in the final grade:
•
•
•
•
Active participation in the project (10%)
Prototype with test cases (50%)
Documentation (10%)
Final Report (10%)
32
• Project Poster (10%)
• Final presentation (10%)
33
University: Technische Universität Berlin (TUB)
Department: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Course ID: AIM3 - SDADM (0434 L 472)
Course name: Scalable Data Analysis and Data Mining
Name and email address of the instructors: Volker Markl (sekr@dima.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Web page of the course: http://www.dima.cs.tu-berlin.de
Semester: 3
Number of ECTS: 6
Course breakdown and hours:
Integrated course: 4 hrs. plenary sessions per week, 8 hrs. home and project work, totals 180 hrs./term
•
•
•
•
Plenary sessions: 60 hrs.
Exercises/practice: 30 hrs.
Home/Project Work: 60 hrs.
Preparation & Consolidation: 30 hrs.
Goals:
The focus is of this module is to get familiar with different parallel processing platforms and paradigms and
to understand their feasibility for different kinds of data mining problems. For that students will learn how
to adapt popular data mining and standard machine learning algorithms such as: Naı̈ve Bayes, K-Means
clustering or PageRank to scalable processing paradigms. And subsequently gain practical experience in how
to implement them on parallel processing platforms such as Apache Hadoop, Stratosphere/Apache Flink and
Apache Giraph.
Learning outcomes:
Recent advances in technology have led to rapid growth of big data. This led to the need for cost efficient and
scalable analysis algorithms. In this course concepts for scalable analysis of big data sets will be presented
and applied using open source technologies. Participants of this module will gain an in-depth understanding
of concepts and methods as well as practical experience in the area of scalable data analysis and data mining.
The course is principally designed to impart: technical skills 50%, method skills 30%, system skills 10%, social
skills 10%
Readings and text books:
• Anand Rajaraman, Jeffrey David Ullman. Mining of Massive Datasets (Free online: http://infolab.
stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/book.pdf)
• Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, Mark A. Hall. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques,
Third Edition. Morgan Kaufmann, 2011.
• Tom White. Hadoop: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition. O’Reilly Media, 2012.
Prerequisites:
Basic course on Database Systems as well as good Java programming skills are required. A basic understanding
of Probability and Statistics as well as Linear Algebra is helpful.
Table of contents:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
MapReduce + HDFS / MapReduce (in detail) + joins
Apache Flink / Spark
Review linear algebra, probability, statistics
Introduction to data mining (including data preparation)
Classification (including feature extraction)
Clustering
Dimensionality reduction (including feature extraction)
Collaborative filtering
Streaming
Network analysis
Statistical NLP
Privacy, legal issues
Visualization analytics
Assessment breakdown:
Written homework (20 %), protocolled practical project work (50 %), oral feedback session (30 %)
34